Scars of the Soul
by Rainy Daze Writer
Summary: A one-shot based on the theme of "permanent scars." Challenge courtesy of jayfeather12345. Badgerstep reflects on the way he's changed over time after a chaotic event at the LightningClan border and wonders just how deep his old scars run.


**Scars of the Soul**

* * *

Characters:

Badgerstep/kit – large, responsible black tom with green eyes, white-striped face, and large paws

Sharpfang – ambitious, aloof dark tabby tom with amber eyes

Breezemist – long-furred grey tom with green eyes

* * *

Badgerstep was too furious to do anything but race through the forest, paws pounding heavily on the needle-strewn ground and blood roaring in his ears. The night sky seemed to be very far away, the stars of Silverpelt twinkling distantly as though they had seen nothing of what he had just watched, yet so close that it was as if the spindly pine trees surrounding him were the only thing keeping the sky from crushing him under its vast weight.

His claws were unsheathed, his white-slashed black pelt bristling, his ears pressed flat against his skull, his eyes mere slits. The entirety of his being was seething with fury. _How dare he? How dare he?_ The thought rang over and over again, a relentless flood that roared through his mind, tumbling in a raging torrent over any thoughts that tried to surface and divert his attention from the one thing that was driving him blindly through ShadeClan territory.

Had his muscles not begun to twinge in exhaustion, Badgerstep didn't know if he would ever have stopped. He was fueled by his anger, and that alone could have taken him to the Moongully and back without stopping. His sides heaved and he gasped for breath, flopping onto a bed of pine needles. Then he smelled a foul scent that elicited a violent reaction from him; his fur, already bristling, puffed out even more. He curled his lips into a snarl and squinted, lashing his tail and digging his claws into the earth, and hissed softly.

_Badger. Badger. Badger where is it where's the badger **where is it at it's coming for you right now it could be anywhere –**_ Then he stopped himself, growling, "Calm down." The sound of his voice was enough to ground him. "You're at the abandoned badger sets. Key word, Badgerstep – _abandoned_. There's no badger here, and the smell is just a stale trace from the last time we had to chase away a badger."

Speaking aloud, he had learned, was a good way to stabilize when he was in the midst of a panic attack. Admittedly, he sometimes worried that his Clanmates might find him insane – after all, not many cats took strolls through the forest on their own while conversing with themselves. Despite that, no other method suggested by the medicine cats had worked. They'd given him herbs to calm his terror and repress the nightmares that sometimes had him jolting awake with a yowl, but they didn't work. Nor did it help to talk to others about the badger incident (that's what everyone called it, the Badger Incident, like it was some sort of taboo). Instead, Badgerstep did his best to discuss it with himself. And it worked.

Though his heart was still beating irregularly and he flinched whenever the trees rustled overhead, Badgerstep had sufficiently calmed down. This was the very same den where he had (done battle with? faced? defended his sister from?) been attacked by the badger. It was strange, sometimes, to think about all that had happened. At his size now, he could easily face a badger if he weren't so afraid. Yet when he was a kit, barely the size of a badger's paw, he had stood in the face of the beast – terrified, but bravely standing to fight it.

But that wasn't why he had been so enraged, and Badgerstep took the chance to reflect on why he was here at all – his father's ruthless savagery.

That afternoon, as the sun had begun to sink towards the horizon, Badgerstep had been patrolling with Sharpfang, Nettlehawk, and Pepperpaw. He was the odd one out – Nettlehawk and Pepperpaw were his father's friends, and Badgerstep had been thrown onto the patrol as a last-minute fourth cat. They had padded along the LightningClan border, a short distance from it, when a young tabby tom had streaked across the border after a rabbit. His speed was astounding, but Badgerstep had known that he was in trouble the second that Sharpfang stiffened.

Asterpetal, the LightningClan deputy, had approached the border more slowly with an angry expression. The apprentice, Chestnutpaw, had turned to her with the rabbit in his jaws and meowed something, only for Sharpfang to cut him off with a ruthlessly cold tone. Badgerstep had only been able to watch as his father and Nettlehawk grew increasingly hostile towards the two LightningClan warriors until, finally, they attacked. It would be traitorous to pull them off, but he hadn't wanted to watch. It was brutal.

Chestnutpaw and Asterpetal had been left bloody and beaten into unconsciousness, claw marks scored all down their flanks, fur and flesh alike torn. Badgerstep had watched, horrified, as Sharpfang, Nettlehawk, and Pepperpaw stepped free with bloody claws and teeth and looked at each other with smug expressions.

"So," Sharpfang had meowed, turning to him, "You don't want to defend your Clan's prey, is that it?"

"It was an _apprentice_!" he had hissed in shock, backing away. "There's no way that you never made a stupid move when you were as young as him! There's not a single young cat in all the Clans who hasn't crossed the border accidentally!"

Sharpfang sniffed. "Perhaps you're right, but there are levels of stupidity to breaking the warrior code. There are the minor infringements, such as placing a paw over the border, and there are the major ones."

"Like stealing prey," Nettlehawk had added helpfully.

Badgerstep had shot the mottled tom a glare and received a sneer in response. Sharpfang had nodded at his comment, however, and added, "And, of course, sneaking out of camp." His eyes never left his son's when he pointed it out, and it was perfectly clear what he was referencing.

There were no words to respond to that kind of comment. Badgerstep's mouth had hung open at the blatant implications, and a kind of shocked silence had fallen over the patrol as Nettlehawk and Pepperpaw realized what Sharpfang meant.

"I don't want to look at you anymore," his father had added after a moment. He'd turned away and begun down the hill, dark tabby pelt matted with blood. "Run off and have a nervous breakdown, or perhaps invite LightningClan to cross the border and take all of our prey – I don't really care what you do, so long as you get out of my sight." His tail had twitched coolly as he led Nettlehawk and Pepperpaw down the hills back towards the forests of ShadeClan.

The only thing left for Badgerstep to do was to run as quickly as he could into LightningClan's territory and pray to StarClan that he made it to their camp before one of their patrols found him.

Luckily, StarClan was on his side and he had made it there with relative ease, though his idea of _where_ the camp was had been wrong, to say the least. Several warriors had tried to bully him into submission, but when he had snarled that their deputy and her apprentice were bleeding out at the border, they had been all too willing to take him to Kestralstar.

By the time they reached Asterpetal, she had returned to consciousness – and Chestnutpaw was dead. Kestralstar had given him a warrior name to take to StarClan and helped Asterpetal back into their territory, and that was when Badgerstep had started running.

He leaned against a tree now, shuddering with repressed anger at the memory of his father's words to him. _I don't want to look at you anymore._

It wasn't the first time that Sharpfang had said that to him.

* * *

"Badgerkit? Can you hear me?"

His world was a haze of pain. Every movement, every thought, sent a blaze of agony shooting through him. Sometimes he would twitch uncontrollably, crying out from the hurt and unable to stop himself from moving. Sometimes, barely conscious, he would let out a low whine for no reason. He couldn't be silent. He couldn't be still. But all he wanted was to be both.

Breezemist's voice sounded again, gently. "Badgerkit, your father is coming to visit you. I'm going to give you some feverfew to bring down your fever, okay? Open your mouth, please."

It made him shudder with pain, but he let his mouth drop open enough for the long-furred grey tom to slide a few small, soft leaves into his mouth. They weren't nearly as bitter as some of the other medicine he had been given, but his nose wrinkled involuntarily just the same.

"Is he awake?"

_Sharpfang!_ Badgerkit struggled to sit up through the pain, eager to see his father. "I'm okay!" he squeaked, trying to make himself look as tough as possible. _He's finally visiting me!_ "It's good to see you!"

His father padded into the medicine den, eyes cool. "Badgerkit," he greeted him flatly, then looked at Breezemist. "How about the wounds?" he meowed. "Will he be able to be a warrior?"

The medicine cat hesitated for a moment, then meowed, "He's a strong kit… he's already survived longer than most kits would have, faced with injuries as bad as his. As for whether he'll be able to function normally," he lowered his voice, but Badgerkit could still hear, "I can't say for now. He'll definitely have permanent scars, and it's more than likely that his health will be affected."

Sharpfang looked at Badgerkit, who quivered under the force of his father's stare. _I _have_ to be a warrior! It doesn't matter how much it hurts._ "Do whatever you have to," Sharpfang meowed with a shrug. "If he can't be a warrior like any other cat, what does it matter anyway?"

"I can!" Badgerkit exclaimed, trying to get to his paws. "I'll be the best warrior in the Clan, father, I swear it! I will! Look, I can stand up! I'll be able to fight better than any cat!"

His father snorted derisively. "Are you sure he didn't get knocked on the head? Look at him, Breezemist, there's no way he'll ever be a warrior, not like this. He can't even stand up."

A thorn of hurt pierced Badgerkit's chest as his father scorned him. He dug his claws into the ground, ignoring the fact that one of his wounds was beginning to sting worse than the others, and dragged himself closer to Sharpfang. "Father, look! I'm strong!" he begged, hating himself for sounding like a mewling kit. "I promise, I'll be the greatest warrior ever!"

Breezemist moved over to him. "Badgerkit, you're bleeding again. Don't exert yourself."

"Pathetic," Sharpfang growled. "He can't move without hurting himself somehow. And all this happened because he snuck out of camp and decided he was brave enough to face a badger. How did one of my kits turn out to be so useless?"

Breezemist let out a hiss of shock. "Sharpfang, he's right here!"

_What does he say when I'm _not_ right here?_ Badgerkit wanted to know, staring up at the dark tabby tom he had always admired. "I was protecting Foxkit! I didn't just charge into a badger!"

The medicine cat nosed him and murmured, "The Clan knows. You were very brave."

He thrust his head around Breezemist's muzzle and looked at his father, begging him silently to praise him, to at least _acknowledge_ him. _I'm your son! Look at me!_

Sharpfang did. His head swung around, amber eyes baleful and cold. "I stand by what I said," he meowed, not looking away from Badgerkit. "_Pathetic_. You can't stand up. You run headfirst into battle with a badger. You'll never be a warrior. I don't want to look at you anymore."

Badgerkit stared at him, feeling as if his father had taken him and dashed him against a rock, breaking everything the badger had left intact. He was faintly aware of Breezemist thrusting the dark tabby out of the medicine den with an angry growl. It felt as if he were surrounded by fog, everything around him swirling and grey.

_I don't want to look at you anymore._

* * *

I'm not sure if I like this one - the first part of it was written all within an hour, but the second part was written with three weeks between the story. It's not nearly as detailed as I like, but right now I don't think I can do anything more for this.

I do have an update on the story formerly known as _Fate's Treachery_. Because these one-shots are much better than the actual story, I will now try to tie them together in order to make the story. No one story, no one main character. A collection of one-shots that form the story.


End file.
